Oct 09
9
Sniper Marketing
As tracking software and abilities become more sophisticated, figuring out which of your markets is responding to which ads is becoming simpler.
Even better, it lets you know which demographics are responding at which times of day, which can mean that an ad campaign could have as many different layers as it has potential consumers.
What does this mean for the future of marketing? Instead of a huge blast approach, where companies would try for one big ad that would hit everyone who saw it hard, marketers are now trying to figure out how to track down each individual demographic and hit them with a series of smaller ads directly targeted to them.
Call it Sniper Marketing.
Whatever you call it, it’s working. The data component of marketing has come to the forefront, and figuring out which customers are responding is a big part of whether a campaign will stay or go.
Ideas that might not have been big enough before are now a valuable part of each marketing campaign, since they’re effective toward one section of the customer base. It also means that innovation is valued far more, as companies vie not to come up with the next big ad slogan but to create more personal relationships with each customer on an individual level.
Standard online advertisements include banners and small block ads, which consumers are more and more inclined to ignore. After they’ve become de rigueur, it takes a lot for an online ad to catch the consumer’s eye at all, much less for someone to click on it to find out more.
Some companies are offering solutions. Their new ad strategy has websites inserting 15 to 30 second video ads between pages on their websites. In order to get to the next page, viewers must watch the ad.
This may solve the huge gap between ads online and ads as they used to perform on TV and in print. Those ads would interrupt the viewer’s experience, forcing them to focus their full attention on the ad before being returned to what they were doing before. The online video ads may well serve the same purpose.
Users may not like it, but they may also adjust more rapidly than advertising marketers give them credit for. If every newspaper began using such ads in their online newsrooms, they might actually break out of their ever-decreasing ad revenue stream from print publication. Remember too that users have already become accustomed to similar short ads interrupting their online TV show viewing experiences.
Aug 09
21
Branding Takes Over Media
We’re seeing the fall of the newspaper, but we’re also seeing a rise in reporting. As more and more industries begin to publish their own news and become sources of information for their customers, are newspapers partially getting shoved aside because their customers are looking elsewhere?
Marketers are building sophisticated communities online, and they’re largely centered on the exchange of information. Blogs and other tools have helped companies build huge audiences that draw more and more people by word of mouth. That means the better a media outlet a company becomes, the less hard it has to work to earn the attention of their ideal consumer.
Consumers are also becoming media sources themselves, rating and commenting on their favorite products and customer experiences. A company that treats a customer poorly can no longer disregard it if that customer also happens to be the head of a popular blog.
Brands that become their own media companies have certain challenges ahead of them. In order to keep the eyes and ears of their customers, they have to continue to create interesting and effective new media, a task that used to be relegated to news industries. Communities without causes often dissolve, however, and unless brands put effort into putting new media in front of them, they can’t enjoy the benefits of a word of mouth audience.
In our previous post, we talked about the rise of the pitchman.
Today we’re sharing a few more tips on how to make the most out of every pitch:
Stop Them in Their Tracks
Once you’ve got a crowd, other people will stop to see what the crowd is looking at. That’s why YouTube videos go viral – everyone’s got to see what over a million people have already seen. Give them a good reason to stop with authority and energy.
Ask a Question
Some of the most famous phrases in pitching are questions, and it’s for good reason. Many pitches start with questions like, “Wouldn’t you like?” or the infamous “How much would you pay?” Ask a question that the customer couldn’t possibly answer with anything but a positive response.
Give Them a Thrill
When victims of a recent layoff are sitting on the couch with insomnia, they’re not looking to be bored. They’re hoping for a quick thrill, a shot of adrenaline that makes them feel a little better for a second. Pitchmen give them that with the promise of winning something others don’t – “Buy now and get this free extra!” It’s a small boost, but every little bit counts.
Sophisticated advertising was great when the market was doing well, but when consumers have a small budget, it may actually boil down to who can shout the loudest – and the most persuasively.
Enter the TV pitchman. Pitchmen are the reasons infomercials succeed, the ones who are able to hawk their products with such enthusiasm and persistence that consumers find themselves, at 3:00 in the morning, reaching for the phone to dial that 800 number. There are a few things that make a good pitchman into a great one.
Believe in It
Nothing kills a pitch faster than a pitchman who isn’t as amazed by the product as he’s swearing you’ll be. If you’re going to pitch, find yourself a product that you really believe people will want.
Solve a Common Problem
You can’t sell a product that only a small portion of the population needs. That’s fine for other kinds of advertising, but when it comes to being a pitchman, nothing is better than a product that fixes a problem everyone has. Spot removers still move off the shelves for a reason.
Tune in for more tips on what makes a good pitch.
In January 2009 CBS viewers noticed something new. Two minute infomercials for a DVD set, “The World at War” by Time Life began regularly showing up on the prime time Saturday line up. This is a clear indication of just how troubled the broadcast advertising market really is.
“The economy is the number one focus for everyone, and it affects the advertisers and the rates,” says Pat Boos, Senior Vice President, acquisition and marketing at Direct Holdings Americas, which licenses the Time Life brand.
Infomercials prevent dead space. “When someone pulls off the air,” Boos explains, “like a pharmaceutical or medical or sports company, the networks sometimes find themselves with last-minute dead space,” she said. “We can come in and say we’ve got a tape ready, we’ve got the product ready.”
According to Ms. Boos, Time Life is currently running double the number of spots they ran last year. Networks typically try to avoid infomercial advertisers because they pay significantly less than the cost of general advertising.
However, in exchange for such low rates, infomercial advertisers have no say over when their ads will run. Priority is given to full-priced ads, but when they don’t have enough advertisers to fill those slots, they rely on direct-response ads.
Direct-response ads are increasing all over. And it’s not just television filling empty time slots with direct response ads. Radio, print and Internet media buyers are doing it too. The trend is more noticeable in broadcast because networks cannot add or lengthen programming to fill empty spots.
Twitter, the micro-blogging, real-time messaging platform, has become big business. The social media magnet managed to close on a $35 million round of venture capital on top of the $20 million it had already raised is growing proof that Twitter has some pretty big plans taking shape.
Everybody wants in. Twitter’s lure even has big corporations joining the service. “There are companies and brands depending on it more and more, and finding the insights valuable in how they make decisions,” said co-founder Biz Stone.
It would seem that Twitter might be able to benefit from selling services to corporate America, but no, their plans are much more focused than that. In fact, Twitter just might end up giving Google a run for its money.
The second-largest search source. In 2007, Twitter bought search engine Summize and has even began using the search feature with certain user accounts. Federated Media CEO John Battelle recognizes that Twitter has become the second largest source of search queries with one big difference: Twitter allows users to search real-time conversation.
“Twitter owns its own search which is more valuable than Twitter itself,” says Howard Lindson, an entrepreneur who launched a Twitter-based business, Stock Twits.
One thing is for certain: while much of Twitter’s true potential remains to be seen, it will certainly be big
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Lots of professionals use social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn to network and connect with others personally and professionally. The downward spiraling economy has resulted in thousands of lost jobs. Participation on these sites has skyrocketed as a result.
Reaching beyond your direct network
“I think we have only just scratched the surface of using social networking for job hunting,” says Matt Hicks, a spokesperson for Facebook. “People are now going beyond their direct network and reaching that next layer of people that may have interest in getting a job with your company, but may be hard to reach through traditional media.
Job loss numbers are climbing
Many more people are out of a job now than this time last year, so obviously more people are looking. The plummeting stock market is what started the first wave of layoffs, leaving 533,000 people jobless during the month of November. The Department of Labor Statistics tell us that since December 2007, 2.7 million Americans have lost their jobs.
Get connected
In these troubled economic times, it’s more important than ever for people to stay connected with their personal and professional networks. Hicks explains, “It’s harder to find jobs and times are tough. People naturally want to stay in touch not only to find the next job, but even to get advice.”
Mainstream and broad-based radio station formats perform better than smaller niche-based formats in metered ratings is largely determined by the main metric used to describe the audiences: the relationship between “cume” and Time Spent Listening (TSL).
Just about every station in PPM markets will experience a significant cume increase because the meter will clearly show that people are listening to twice as many stations than are being recorded in the diary.
Conversely, the meter reports a dramatic TSL because the meter shows that people are listening to more stations, but for shorter amounts of time.
Making the switch
As a matter of fact, the TSL declines are so dramatic that Average Quarter Hour Persons (AQH), the relationship between the cume and TSL, shows lower results across the board with the PPM.
“We used to see people write down 50 hours of listening to one station,” said Charlie Sislen, President of Research Director, Inc. “Stations that were running on their great Time Spent Listening in a diary-based world have to adjust their format for more than big-cume stations.”
Keeping the listeners happy
PM forces many broadcasters to rethink their business model to meet the challenges of the new methodology.
Sislen says, “Stations can’t rely on an emotional relationship with listeners. Personalities have to be tight and concise. If they start to ramble, people turn them off and the meter picks that up. ”
There’s a real connect (as opposed to a disconnect) that needs to take place between the stations and their listeners. “High TSL radio stations need to be more conscious of what’s going on-air than they were before. They have to make sure they’re not blowing off listeners,” added Sislen.
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